A birthday worth celebrating: my journey from bleak to hope this year

This is a personal episode about my kidney journey over the last year. I was told, or more correctly shouted and screamed at, by my consultant when he informed me that I should be on dialysis. It was the first time I'd heard it, on that 21st July 2025 hospital appointment. It also turned out that they planned just to monitor my kidney until she gave up the ghost. That would have been next January / February. I was pretty ill by then.  I'd have got slowly sicker the nearer as I got nearer to that time. There was to be no help I find out months later that the plan had been to put me on dialysis and keep me on it for life. There was to be no discussion on any other option discussed or put forth. 

Luckily, as you've heard from other episodes I've gone through an arduous journey to find a new consultant in a different hospital. Now I've moved from feeling like things were quite bleak to slowly finding hope again. There will come a time that I will need to go on the transplant list. That could be two years, or more. I now will be kept as well as possible with drugs until then. This episode is about resilience, better care, and learning to live fully even with chronic illness.

Click here or the graphic above listen to the episode.

Always remember to relish your health.

Marian